Last week, Martha Stewart lightly shaded her friend Blake Lively. Blake had been making such a big deal about her friendship with Martha, and to give Blake some credit, her friendship with and adoration of Martha Stewart seemed somewhat genuine. Martha, in turn, doesn’t hate Blake. But Martha doesn’t get why a pretty blonde WASP would give up acting to become some lifestyle maven. Well, E! News asked Blake about Martha’s comments and everything having to do with Preserve:
Lively believes she can be both an actress and a lifestyle entrepreneur.
“I want to have my own path professionally and even as she said, I’m an actress,” Lively told me earlier today. “I’m doing something totally different so now I sort of have two careers going on and it’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out. But really what it is, is I have two passions. And I think ultimately, I will always be doing both, but one is going to be paying the bills better than the other.”
Preserve is part magazine with articles, recipes and fashion spreads and part e-commerce with a Lively-curated collection of products for sale, including bow ties, sterling silver jewelry, jars of vegan hot fudge, porcelain vases, California-shaped cutting boards and more.
“It was a very natural transition for me,” Lively said. “Everything that Preserve is is everything that I grew up around in a big way. My mom is somebody who made everything by hand and anything she didn’t make by hand was a discovery and the discovery was often something that was found in a thrift store that was half broken or falling apart. Or it was something an artisan only made a few of, but we couldn’t afford so we would just go and look at it every day and one day she would just buy it and hide it from my dad.”
Lively, who lives in Connecticut (not too far from Stewart) with her hubby of almost two years Ryan Reynolds, didn’t let many people around her know that she was launching Preserve. “It’s what I know better than acting so being in this space is something I’ve done my whole life, just not professionally,” Lively explained. “So now it’s something that I get to share with more people. I’ve been sharing it with friends forever. I didn’t even tell most friends that I was doing it because they still get their own curated products and gifts from me. I’m that girl.”
And also the girl who has idolized Martha.
“Who doesn’t want to be Martha Stewart?” Lively said. “Martha Stewart has been a huge inspiration to me my entire life. She’s a huge source of inspiration for my mom. She’s how I came to know and love Martha. I always say that Martha Stewart Living is the only magazine I ever had growing up. I never had Tiger Beat or any of that stuff.”
Am I the only one who got really annoyed by Blake in this piece? She’s trying so hard to be this magical special unique person offering these special unique magical items and she just gets way too carried away. And it’s hilarious that she thinks there was no build-up or press surrounding this launch. Girl, stop. You got the cover of Vogue to promote your launch. You gave interviews about it for a year. Stop with the twee act.
But the twee act continued in another way – Blake took over the Vogue account a few days ago and she answered questions about Ryan, NYC and Beyonce. You can read some of her answers here.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.
I do think Martha needs to stop being such an a-hole to anyone who dares to do lifestyle…. she’s so hateful to everyone!
I don’t think she is.
It’s her job and she is probably sick of all these pretentious very little talented actresses trying to get people interested in their business only becuase of their famous status.
Well said!
Martha was a model before she got into catering and lifestyle. I don’t see how it’s that different.
Being snarky about it just makes her look bad-tempered and insecure. I’m surprised she doesn’t realize that “I wish her all the best” would make her look more gracious and would do a better job of sounding like she doesn’t care and isn’t threatened by them.
@Tragic Sandwich
If you read a bio on Martha Stewart, you’ll see how it’s much, much, different. Martha has her flaws, but no one disputes how hard she had to work and all of the shit she had to deal with as a woman to get her way to the top. Comparing Blake Lively/Gwyneth Paltrow to Martha Stewart is like comparing a Bethenny Frankel to Oprah. Or a merit-based Yalie with President Bush.
And she created that niche. But it’s not realistic to think that because you create something of that nature, it will be unique to you forever.
At the same time, much as I can’t stand GOOP (and I found the Preserve site really hard to look at, much less spend time on), they are doing things differently than Martha–a much smaller scale, a different audience, etc.
And certainly I don’t have the impression that they’re doing them as well–I don’t follow any of them that much, but Martha really seems to have the full picture (Omnimedia is apt, in her case). In terms of scale, she is off the charts.
My point, which I made in a confusing way, was that you can’t point the “Actress!” finger when you’re an ex-model. Those elements of their backgrounds ARE too similar, so I think it’s a bad point to try and make. And yes, she definitely broke ground and created something in a way they don’t have to. Of course they don’t have to deal with the things she did. She already did that for them. I don’t have to put up with the things Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul did, yet I can still vote and run for office.
So why so nasty and seemingly defensive, particularly over people who are at most doing a sliver of what she’s doing? It’s the dichotomy between her personality and her persona.
Far better to say, “Well, it’ll be interesting to see how things turn out for them–this is a tough business.” Because probably none of them will be in it as long or as successfully as Martha, but the outcome will be more due to what their natures and business sense are than what their previous careers were.
Martha’s got a massive ego. Undoubtedly.
This woman is the beige-st. Froth. No substance.
Thank you for this description, you just pinpointed why I dislike her!
Well then you set the bar pretty low, since you can’t act.
Exactly.
I came in thinking, “The jokes practically write themselves.”
I know! I read the headline and just thought “wow, preserve is going to tank.”
I do not want to hear the word curate anymore.
“Let her try” – from the Mouth of Holy Martha herself.
(And don’t think for a moment she is one who wouldn’t know what context that would be repeated in again and again and again – the wily old fox)
I’ve got no interest in being Martha Stewart.
“Who doesn’t want to be Martha Stewart?”
*raises hand* Oooh, me, me!!
Martha Stewart is an awful person.
I like Blake. She’s harmless.
I like Blake too. And I like her website.
I third the “I like Blake” movement. I don’t know why there’s such an instant dislike of this girl on this site but I think she’s lovely. I wish her the best of luck with both her “passions.”
I’m not a Blake fan, but she’s harmless. And I think part of what people dislike about her is that she’s like the coddled youngest sibling. The final child that was the recipient of the special treatment and doesn’t even realize it. Classic youngest child in a big family.
@Truth
4th here.
Its a slow gossip month so something innocuous like a Martha Stewart comment becomes news, especially as Blake always brings the comments
@TheOriginalKitten….Agree… Martha is a woman of immense accomplishments, but all that for me is tarnished by the fact that she is a BIT%CH, and contrary to popular opinion being a bit$ch is not ok. Women like Martha continue to keep other women down, as they refuse to encourage the next possible generation. Do I think Lively is the next Martha? No, but I can’t shade her for trying. I often wonder if the legion of Martha fans would still love her if they knew the real beast.
I like her too she is harmless and has very unpretentious goals which is really refreshing. she seems sweet and normal!
I agree. Never did get the Blake-hate here. She behaves herself, I’ve never heard that she was a wild child, a b*tchy backstabber or any of the other behavioral issues so rampant in Young Hollywood.
I appreciate her over the top glamour without looking like a piece of Kartrashian. She walks that fine line well.
Preserve is a stupid website. Good stuff, bad design. And you can get designer hot fudge at Whole Foods. Why sell designer hot fudge?
Omg, please go away.
Meh. She’s doing something. If she just sat back and shopped and excelled at being Mrs. Ryan Reynolds, we’d be snipping at her for that. At least she’s not selling 2,500 dollar pairs of socks or something like you know who.
I like Blake. I think she is very pretty. I enjoyed her time on Gossip Girl. I like her and Ryan Reynolds together. She seems like a pleasant woman and I wish her well on her new web site.
I have never understood the dislike people have for her. Unless I am unaware of something awful she did, I just don’t get the hate for her.
I’ve never hated her. I think she’s pretty and nice. I loved the sound of her southern wedding and how they did it. Sometimes what she says bores me and I might make fun of that, but I’ve always liked Blake.
I agree. I think people dislike her because she’s as vanilla as it gets and unlike other uber vanilla actresses (Amy Adams, for example) she’s not talented. But I’ve never heard any bad stories about her behavior. I like her, too, as a pretty girl whose style I dig and not much more than that.
Jesus. She is a scary (yet somehow) boring mix of regina George and Betty Draper. I can just see her short-circuiting and jerking around her Conn. kitchen saying”I’ma very lucky very lucky girl….very lucky girl” Horrifying.
I went to the Preserve website out of curiosity and just saw a bunch of sh*t that one can easily procure at the local TJ Maxx. These actresspreneurs are so silly.
LOL
Word of the day is “curated” or as we peasants say “I picked this out for you”
Lol! “Curated” is totally up there with “artisan” or in peasant, “I made this”.
that’s what i noticed – “gifts curated for friends.” what? stuff that you picked out as a gift? haha
I’m going to start telling people I’ve curated stuff for them. Look husband, I curated this artisanal toilet paper from Walmart.
two of my least favourite words are artisan & curated. ridiculous & pompous.
Sounds a bit too try hard to me with her answers.
However – ““It’s what I know better than acting” lol
Well since she can’t act, this will have to be a little bit of a step up.
Did you guys see that Lainey blind a few weeks ago that must have been Blake? Allegedly, she’s horrible to the Preserve staff and is know to hang up on people when she doesn’t like what’s being said. It also alleged that she’s obsessed with getting pregnant.
Yeah, that blind item was pretty rough. It said she was a drag to work for.
Giving unrealistic deadlines, and then refusing to pay overtime, for example. Harsh.
Not a Blake defender (I don’t get why people love her—she looks and sounds boring and pretentious, but I waive it because she’s young), but how do you know the blind is about her? Lots of celebrities have other ventures. I’ve never heard rumours of Blake being a beeyotch (not that I have a hard time believing that, either). Just wondering why it has to be Blake?
People think it is Blake because Lainey always talked about her having “good game” and how she got Leo Dicaprio, etc. Then in the blind, Lainey said something like “it takes more than good game to get pregnant”.
Damn, her body! Damn! That’s all I got.
Am I the only one intensely annoyed by her use of “curated”?
OMG, I just wrote the same thing down below. Great minds.
No-she’s pretentious and just ridiculous.
Why?? because she started a website. In your humble opinion what should she be doing??
Some women have a hard time admitting their ambitions and career goals. The twee thing is “cuter” and less threatening, even if claws and nails are out in the back end. And then they’ll say they’ve been “very fortunate” and “blessed”.
You know everything better than you know acting. You know the things you don’t know better than you know acting.
LOL! I liked her on Gossip Girl, but Serena was just about the farthest thing from a “demanding” role as one can get. When I saw her in that Oliver Stone movie Savages I wanted to claw my eyes out with how bad her acting was. Last night my husband tried to do a re-watch of that movie and I leaped up from our sofa and put in an episode of the 1980s spy action comedy Scarecrow and Mrs. King instead. ANYTHING but Savages.
I would love to have her hair, and I have to admit, my interest is piqued by the mention of vegan hot fudge. She’s kind of the perfect WASP girl, and while it isn’t something that interests me, I’d prefer her honesty about who she is as opposed to the phony hardcore act by Kristen Stewart.
I think I’m beginning to hate the word curated. It seems like she’s overusing that word so much in interviews for this venture that I’m over it. Maybe she’s not and it just seems like it. I had already had enough of Gwyneth and her “curated essentials” on GOOP. LOL
+1 These ladies need a thesaurus…using the word “curated” doesn’t make the item sound any more special, just more pretentious.
I like Blake, but her site sucks donkey’s balls. The writing is atrocious. In some places, complete and utter nonsense. It’s as if she (or whomever she hired to write the content) wrote with simple words and clear and succinct sentences…and then proceeded to use a thesaurus to convert every single word into the most descriptive and fanciful words she could find.
And those teeth! I’m BLIND!
She just started, If the site needs to be revamped. they can take the whole thing down & have it up in running again w/a new design If all the criticizers had any business sense they would know that the first launch is never the totally product trial & error is always part of the tract for growth!!
I don’t think it’s a bad idea for her to do a lifestyle website. In the contrary, I was 100% behind her if it means she quits acting or just does bad movies I don’t want to see, so I don’t have to endure her painful acting.
I think it’s a natural evolution for her to do this website, Blake having a lifestyle blog make more sense than Reese, imo. She is know for her style, she talks about cooking and decorating her house since several years, she likes that stuff and good for her. She is not a good actress, and was on a bad cw teen show, it’s not like she was going to win Oscars and fronting her own franchise at the end of the day. Whereas with a lifestyle brand she can have a second career and I think she could be more successful with that.
I think her problem it’s that she hyped too much her site when it wasn’t even good or noteworthy in the first place. A lot of people are criticizing or poking fun at her because this project just sounds so pretentious and try hard when she could have done a simple and cute website which corresponded with her bubbly personality… But instead, she got another vogue cover for that, and she kept insisting it was special and different and no one ever did something like her. And she tried to appear like that super busy business woman who worked on that project several years (when the final product doesn’t seem elaborate at all), and who is smart and educated, she know how to write a text, because her father is a professor, blablablah… Then her site comes out, and it’s unoriginal, badly written and designed. All this hype for nothing. Of course some people are going to poke fun at the starlet who tries to comes as smart and sophisticated when she just writes dumb and pretentious texts. She tried to be different than Goop but at the end it’s the same thing because she doesn’t seem self aware.
I think she made the same errors with her acting career. She was a cute bubbly blonde on a teen show, nobody expected her to be the next Cate Blanchett. And suddenly she was everywhere, and kept leaking all the A list role she auditioned for. That’s when people started to dislike her because she was overrated and too ambitious for her lack of talent.
Seconded! Preserve is no different from all the independent/specialty shops that one can find in one’s neighbourhood. These shop owners go through sourcing and buying process with a lot of consideration …
Martha Stewart may be an awful person, but we all danm well know that she can cook all of those recepies in all of her cook books and has done all of the decorating crap in her magazines in her own house time and time again. The woman has all the skills and if Martha Stewart was giving advice about lifestyle I might not do it (because really who has all that time) but I’m not gonna lie and say I wouldn’t read it. Martha will always be my favourite G. 🙂 As for Blake, she’s not Martha yet, but she’s far less annoying that Goop. Let her do her thing.
Is acting still your career if you’re not doing it ?
No one is going to admit that they’re turning to a new thing because they were a flop at something else.
Yes she is still acting & if I can recall all the articles I have read or interviews, she has never ranted about a new role or movie project, her conversation has always been about family & food. i would think if she wanted to get on the fast track for more movie roles you would hear mroe about auditions for roles, not about how her website is doing
You know who has a good lifestyle site? Elisabeth Banks. It’s sweet, funny, lovely and not pretentious at all. Like her. She is a cool lady, I love her.
I guess she didn’t pay this site to advertise it for her though.
I LOVE Elizabeth Banks! She is absolutely real and down to earth.
I just find it all so boring
If Blake does a cleanse, she’ll be Goop.
I too wish the Blakey Livelys and the Jessica Albas (and soon Reese Witherspoon) would just admit that the acting offers are not happening much anymore and they are getting older and this is a career 2.0, more than “juggling” of several careers. It’s EXPENSIVE living the Hollywood lifestyle!! This goes for Gwynneth too. It’s HILARIOUS how they all talk like they are in such demand and are CHOOSING to do something besides acting, that it’s all part of their artistic journey. LOL Puh-leeeze, none of these actresses I mention have had a hit in AGES, all are old by Hollywood standards and likely all of them have peaked as high as they can go. acting-wise This is not a CHOICE, but a “gotta pay the bills somehow and acting offers are drying up” move. Younger actresses nipping at their heels, sometimes the talent is not there (Blake and Jessica A) to sustain a long acting career. The one actress who does a lifestyle site and has the guts to actually call their spade a spade will have my admiration. Until then, all of them are basically semi-employed and need something else to do.
I think Blake at her age could get a few more roles. I don’t think she’s hungry enough or driven enough about it to to go out and fight for them and focus. Marriage derailed that ambition I think and she got into this more and more and not focusing on sometimes the hustle young actors have to do to really push for roles as they are building their career..
I thought her small part in Ben Affleck’s movie she did a great job. I didn’t even recognize her.
Is it so hard to imagine that acting is not the be all….end all job. So many of them are trading in the career for babies… as of late they all seem to think motherhood is the only way to function & yet the topic of most comments are if she could get more roles she would not even be thinking about another career. The money is great, but that job has an expiration date & I would suspect @ some point the constant glare of the intrusive public has got to take it toll. No one should be happy living under a microscope.
How does a singular person “curate” a gift for another? That was probably my tipping point. Ugh.
She has a totally banging bod! And good hair. I did like her response to being in the video (from the link) – I felt really cool for about 10 minutes. Good response.
My immediate thought upon reading the title: Well, that’s not hard…
She’s a glorified Stepford Wife which disturbs me. I guess I can’t with someone who has a 1950’s view of the world. I just wish she’d stop acting, move to Greenwich, pop out a few kids, start taking up the dolls and martinis and stop being splashed all over the press. She has a limited audience so find them and stop boring us all.
It’s like she thinks she needs to forsake everything (except acting) that’s not related to the lifestyle biz in order to appear genuine. Well, it’s kind of backfiring because that’s totally unbelievable! If lifestyle wasn’t such a lucrative line of business to pursue right now, or if her acting career was on fire, Blake would not be talking about any of this.
So I went and looked at her site. It’s not good so far, especially the layout, the way she is showcasing items or designers. It’s not enticing me to buy at all or to even want to stay on the site. I have to admit I went to GOOP’s then and found some recipes I liked, and if I was spending the money, found clothing I liked. I at least wanted to stay on GOOP’s and check something out. Preserve is just off big time with how they are going about it. I guess I expected something different. It all felt darker and using that hazy filter in presentation, which is pretty enough I guess for the designer and their designs, but nothing pops out. I think I was expecting her to be like old Charleston, South Carolina, and have a real Southern presentation on the site visually, brighter. I don’t know. It seems like there’s not much there and not thought out well, yet she said she spent a long time getting this ready to go.
Hawkeye was spot on higher up. A lot of those jams and other “gourmet” items look like things I’ve seen in T.J. Maxx.
Is anyone who is criticizing this woman about her website ever launched one of their own. This is business & it is very amusing how people are blasting her for taking advantages she has had in life & doing what she wants This is just the beginning, if it is NOT what she wants or does not pan out the way she thinks it can ALWAYS be revamped, people do it every day of the week. What if she wants a clothing line or Home décor business? She said acting affords her lifestyle she likes, so what?? If you can walk & chew bubble gum at the same time it’s great!! If you could you would too & so would I and I am not mad @ her for living!!